In a typical wireless communication network utilizing the 3GPP or 3GPP2 protocol standards, a PDCCH order sent from an Evolved Node B (eNode B) is used to trigger a random access (RA) procedure in a user equipment (UE) to obtain or update the timing advance needed for uplink transmissions. When multiple component carriers (CCs) are configured to a UE, separate timing advances may be needed for different groups of uplink CCs. Therefore, what is needed is a method and apparatus to efficiently trigger the necessary random access procedure.